Despite its
potential to support NASA's manned spaceflight ambitions, the International
Space Station (ISS) will fall short unless it sees larger crews, more science
and a comprehensive plan to bolster future exploration efforts, according to a report
released this week.

The report,
performed by a National Research Council (NRC) panel of scientists, found the space
station a key resource for the development of technologies required for
future exploration, but lacking in manpower and direction.

"[Our] charges
included a review of...whether the station was really important for space
exploration, and we think it is," said panel chair Mary Jane Osborn, a
professor with the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington,
Connecticut.

But crew
limitations and the absence of an integrated plan to use the station to
work toward NASA's goal of a new manned lunar mission
by 2018 caused some concern to NRC panel members.

"It's very
vital indeed since otherwise, you don't really know what you're doing," Osborn said
of an integrated ISS plan, adding that increasing station crew size will be a
boon for scientific research. "It would allow a significant improvement."

ISS crews
have been limited to two astronauts - down from three members - since the 2003 Columbia accident. They
are slated to return to a three-person level with the arrival of European
astronaut Thomas
Reiter aboard NASA's STS-121 shuttle flight set to launch no earlier than May
2006, when the 13th ISS crew will be aboard.

Panel
members urged NASA to push for a full, six-astronaut ISS crew by 2008, the
earliest the agency believes the station could be ready to sustain such a crew
size.

NASA
officials said the agency has received the panel's report.

"We're
essentially still reviewing it," said NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel said of
the report. "We do believe that our 2007 budget will address the overall plans
for completing the space station, including our objectives and obligations to
our international partners."

NASA plans to launch
up to 19 more shuttle flights, 18 of them to the ISS, before the three-orbiter
fleet is retired in 2010. The space agency's shuttles are the only vehicles
currently capable of delivering the station's most massive components, and NASA
officials are working with their international partners to determine the final order
of those flights.

But panel
members found that at NASA should develop a backup plan to deliver vital ISS
components should the agency's aging shuttle fleet be unable to complete the station
by its retirement date, according to the report.

Tariq joined Purch's Space.com team in 2001 as a staff writer, and later editor, covering human spaceflight, exploration and space science. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Google+, Twitter and on Facebook.